This invention relates to a method and apparatus for determining whether a disabled muscle is voluntarily or involuntarily disabled.
It is becoming increasingly important in the diagnosing of disabilities to determine whether a disability is actually existing or whether it is partially or totally caused by the voluntary activity of a patient. Such an evaluation is difficult with respect to neuromuscular disabilities which constitute the largest and traditionally the most important class of disabilities, since the contraction of many muscles is under the voluntary mental control of the patient. Since, of course, one cannot readily determine whether a patient cannot or will not move a portion of his body by contracting one or more muscles, it has been next to impossible to prove whether a patient is really trying to activate and contract his muscles. Thus, for example, if a patient is claiming injury, it is difficult to determine whether his claim is truthful or is merely a malingering for the purpose of obtaining financial or other benefits.
Indirect attempts have been made to determine whether supposedly disabled muscles are in fact disabled by distracting the patient to catch him off guard during testing of the supposedly disabled muscle or by requesting repeated performance of physical movements by the patient to determine whether the claimed disability appears to be approximately the same in severity. Other attempts have been made to use surveillance to catch the patient unaware and to record the patient's body movements by photographic techniques. These methods are all indirect and require inferential determinations as to whether the alleged muscular disability in fact exists.